Monday rally in Saginaw urges solidarity in face of threats to collective-bargaining rights in Wisconsin, Ohio

SAGINAW — Protesting efforts to limit collective-bargaining rights of public workers in Wisconsin and Ohio, union backers are hosting a “We Are One” Rally here on Monday in Borchard Park.

The event from 2 to 7 p.m. is in the park at the corner of North Michigan and Court, on Saginaw’s West Side.

According to a flyer advertising the rally, the gathering is being held April 4, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. The civil-rights leader was visiting the city in support of a sanitation workers’ strike.

“Join us to stand in solidarity with working people in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and dozens of other states where well-funded, right-wing corporate politicians are trying to take away the rights Dr. King gave his life for,” the flyer reads.

The bill was supported by majority Republicans in the
Legislature and lauded by business groups and tea party activists as
necessary to Ohio’s economic future. Unions and Democrats opposed the
measure, which drew thousands of protesters to the Statehouse over the
past month.

The AFL-CIO, a union umbrella group, announced Friday that
it was staging 20 protest rallies in 14 cities across Ohio. Most are on
Monday, the anniversary of King’s 1968 assassination.

The Ohio legislation is in some ways tougher than Wisconsin's, as it would extend union restrictions to police officers and firefighters. But its reception in Ohio has paled in intensity compared with the raucous fight in Wisconsin, where tens of thousands demonstrated against a similar bill.

Sumi threatened to sanction anyone who disobeyed the order, saying she wanted to be "crystal clear" that no further action on its implementation should be taken.

Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, however, has begun planning to deduct more money from most public employees' paychecks toward their health- and pension-plan costs and to stop deducting union dues, as the new law provides.

If implemented, the law will take away nearly all collective-bargaining rights from the vast majority of Wisconsin’s public employees. Walker has said the new powers for state and local government in the law would save $30 million in the current budget year, which ends June 30.